


Haunted

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Murder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt Spencer Reid, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Post-Prison Spencer Reid, Prison, Sad Spencer Reid, Self-Harm, Self-Insert, Sleep Deprivation, Spencer Reid Needs a Hug, Spencer Reid Whump, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27901246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Haunted by what happened, Spencer tells someone for the first time what he did while in prison.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	Haunted

Rain is meant to be cleansing. From the dawn of man, rain symbolized hope, revitalization, and life. I’d always thought it was that lingering memory of our ancestors that brought us calmness with the rain. But that night when I awoke to the soft pitter-pattering against the window, there was no peace in my bed.

Spencer was not there, but I knew where he was.

The creaking of the old floorboards always seemed louder at night, and the still, humid air seemed colder against my skin still clinging to the warmth from the bed. The path I was walking felt so familiar by that point that I had almost forgotten how recently I’d learned it. It had only been a couple months since Spencer returned home from prison. At least, that was when his body began inhabiting the space again. I was never really sure if the man I loved had actually come with it.

But there he was, exactly where I’d expected him to be. It wasn’t only the way the little visible moonlight reflected off his face that made him more silhouette than man — there was something else inhuman about him. I wondered if that feeling was the reason why the words shadow and specter were interchangeable.

“Spencer?” I called out into the cold quiet, hoping for any semblance of a response. When I got none, I spoke again, louder and with a broken force behind the two syllables that I used to only sing, “... Spencer?”

“I can hear you,” was all that he said.

I wanted it to be a comfort, but it only brought more questions to my already crowded thoughts.

“What are you doing awake?” I asked as I finally arrived at his side.

“There’s a storm,” he concluded, still standing in the same statuesque stance I’d found him in. “I couldn’t sleep with the noise.”

It was a lie. I had the decency not to call him out on it because I knew it would accomplish nothing other than sowing further distrust. I say further, but the truth was that I had no idea what had come between us in the first place. The only thing I knew was that Spencer left me already broken and returned with missing pieces.

“You’ve always slept better when it’s raining,” I pointed out. But I couldn’t will it into existence, no matter how hard I tried.

“Not tonight,” he answered between teeth that begged for the freedom to chatter in the cold. He did not grant them their wish, his jaw steeling back over to keep the words inside.

Spencer had a secret. Its presence was obvious, the proverbial giant baring its ivory tusks in the darkness of our living room, but I did not have a hold on its reigns. The frustration and the insecurity, while felt and suffered by us both, did not belong to me.

“It’s been three days.”

A glance at Spencer’s tightly clenched fists told me that his hands were equally empty. The lead for the monster inside him was not wrapped around his hands. It was wrapped around his neck, suffocating him as he choked out, “Has it?”

“Yes,” I whispered once I drummed up the courage to touch him. Like the clashing of cymbals, my fingertips on his arm caused him to jump. Despite that movement, he didn’t shy away from me. Even as I wrapped my arms around him from behind, he didn’t budge from his place against the window.

“Hm,” he huffed in something that was probably meant to resemble a bitter laugh.

“Please come back to b—” my plea was cut short before it ever came to be.

“I can’t.”

Unlike his previous shaky words, there was no reservation in that admission.

How do you help someone who always has the answers? What do you do when that person won’t even provide you with the seemingly unanswerable question? How do you help someone that doesn’t want your help?

I didn’t know. Spencer was always the one with the answers. So, I did the only thing I could think to do, bringing us back to our usual dynamic regardless of how dead it seemed.

“Spencer, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t go back to bed,” he repeated. His words were slightly condescending, his stoic tone warping into something that hurt.

Something sharp. Sharp like the makeshift shiv that he’d used to escape. I knew that story, but not because Spencer told me. Spencer didn’t talk to me about prison.

‘ _I can’t,_ ’ he would say every time. Just like he did that night. I had been too afraid to ask the question that was begging to follow. But that night, seeing the pale, angular visage of haunted hollowness, I had to try.

“Why not?”

Slowly, Spencer moved. His head turned towards me, but only far enough that he could see my features in his peripheral.

I’d never felt more unsettled by a lover’s eyes. He inspected me from that position so carefully and for such an extended period that I swore I must’ve made a mistake. I expected him to remove my arms and silently find his way to the couch.

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

But to my surprise, Spencer did neither of those things. His hands remained hung at his sides when he finally closed his eyes. Even through his eyelids, I saw the restlessness swimming in the hazel.

“Because they’re there,” he whispered like the undisclosed people would be able to hear him. “I can feel them there.”

His words abruptly stopped, his eyes shooting open in a panic. If my arms hadn’t been around him, I might not have noticed the way his breathing got heavier, and his muscles began to pulse as he tried to calm himself down.

My hands around his waist rose to his chest, slowly finding their way over his heart that beat slow but hard, as if simultaneously begging for rest and seeking a fight wherever it could find one.

_Hyper-vigilance_ , he’d said before. Haunted was a better, truer description of the half-dead man in my embrace. For a second I thought he might lean back into me, allowing himself the slightest freedom to feel comfort, but then he stood up straighter, his back separating from my chest where my heart beat just as hard for him.

“Who are ‘ _they_?’” I tried to keep my voice as unthreatening as possible, to sound more like the woman who loved him than a mother or a therapist. They didn’t exactly carry warm memories at the moment. 

“The other men,” he explained vaguely.

I sought the answers the only way I could think to do it. “The men from the prison?” I said, praying that making him talk wouldn’t drive him further away. Begging him to either come back to me or at least issue a death certificate for the man I used to know.

“Which men?” I pressed.

“All of them,” he choked, and I could see it again. The lead for the monster taking over our home was made of shackles still confining Spencer.

‘ _It’s for your protection_ ,’ they had said when I asked them if he had to be shackled when I saw him. As if he could ever hurt me. As if I wouldn’t let him if he did. Because the Spencer I knew would never hurt for nothing.

I was not naive; I knew that he was troubled. He had been since the moment I met him. But I heard in a movie once that there are people born with tragedy in their blood, and I’d never heard anything more accurately describe Spencer Reid.

“What about the—“

“They are _all there_ ,” Spencer loudly interrupted, tearing away from me and slamming his body against the wall in an attempt to create distance where there was none. “They are _all_ there, _all_ the time.”

With features contorted in a terrified grimace, Spencer’s short breaths and heaving chest were the first indications of tears. They came before even the brackish waters. But once those rose over his lashes, I felt my face wet much the same. 

“I’m here, too,” I urged in what I’d hoped would sound like a promise, “Will you talk to me about them?”

I sounded like a therapist again, and Spencer’s head thunked against the wall as he closed his eyes for just one second before they shot open again.

I wondered what he saw that scared him so badly. 

“I can’t,” he croaked.

“Why not?”

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t!”

That time when the admission left him, it came with an unintelligible shout. Spencer’s hands raked through his hair, pulling on the loose, curly locks that had grown to almost cover his eyes.

I wondered if he thought that would hide ‘ _them_ ’ from his vision.

When I reached out to him, he twisted away from me until the side of his face hit the wall. It was like he didn’t even know where he was, having lost all sense of self-awareness. He must have felt as much like a ghost as he looked to me. Spencer slid down the wall, shrinking into himself and hugging his knees to his chest.

Like a child or cornered animal, he turned his head towards the wall, the plaster undoubtedly cool against his sweat covered forehead. After a brief second, he hit his head harder against the wall, seeking to feel what he’d felt before.

But I couldn’t let him. Falling to the floor after him, I placed my hand between the wall and his head. To my surprise, he continued to hit it, anyway, like he didn’t even notice that he was crushing my hand in the process. Each sharp pain that spread through my palm and shot into my fingertips was nothing compared to the aching in my chest.

I didn’t call out to him because it didn’t feel like it would matter. It didn’t feel like he was there at all.

Using the least amount of force as possible, I wrenched Spencer away from the wall, pulling him against my chest. The trembles and sobs reverberated through me, the sensation soaking into my bones and leaving a different kind of scar. 

I could never forget the way it felt, holding him covered in a cold sweat and tears as he clutched my shirt like it was all he had left. That memory would stay with me forever, burned in what would hopefully fade into the background so I wouldn’t have to see it every time I looked at him.

And I realized then, that what Spencer saw must have been worse, and for him, it might never fade.

“What did they do to you?” I cried, my words slurred by a tired tongue drowning in tears.

“It doesn’t matter,” he whined. Despite the illogicality of the statement, it was not a lie. It was the clearest and most confident that he had been. In a way, he almost sounded angry. Frustrated that I couldn’t see what he saw; I couldn’t comprehend it on my own. Terrified that he had to say it himself.

“Then what does?” I said quietly, using a gentle, careful hand to lift his chin back up to me. The resistance felt at first quickly faded when his eyes met mine. Through those bloodshot eyes and dark irises caught in the shadows, I saw the man I knew. Spencer was still there, holding onto a thread that had frayed beyond repair.

“It was me.”

The words hung in the still stale air, and the longer I searched his face to try and understand, the more scared he became. His eyes widened, his teeth finally beginning to chatter and his face slipping from my fingertips. I desperately threw my arms around his shoulders, pulling him back before he could drift away again.

“You? It was you… what?”

Spencer, unable to look away, closed his eyes again, instead. He shook his head, and between shaky breaths, spoke broken words like a river that burst through the dam.

“I can’t do this. I can’t look at you and talk about this. I can’t even look at you and think about it.”

With each passing word, he grew more frantic until his eyes were open, and his hands pressed down on my shoulder like he had to hold me down on Earth with him.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he cried, “I can’t look at you when I think about it and I think about it _all_ the time.” The words were forced out of his teeth so strongly that spit fell with them, his jaw grinding the bones together and his hands clenching to the point I was scared they might bruise.

Spencer’s eyes were open again, but they were even emptier than before.

“Tell me how I can help you,” I pleaded.

“Tell me…” he mumbled back until he choked on the words. Even then, he pushed through the sentence despite the way it crackled to the point it was almost incomprehensible. “Promise me. Promise me that you’ll love me no matter what.”

It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. The words themselves burned worse than the throbbing in my hand and the pressure on my shoulders, but they were not the worst part. It was the way that blank stare paired with the absolute desperation in his tone. The pair brought me to the conclusion that no matter what I did, I couldn’t promise him what he was asking me.

I wanted to say I was sorry, but instead I asked again, “What happened?”

But relentless in his pursuit for the promise that wasn’t coming, Spencer shook his head, the hands briefly granting me reprieve from the pain only to root themselves in my hair.

“Please. Please, promise me that you will still love me.”

With every beg, I felt the monster in the room growing in size. My own breathing became labored, and my lungs were unable to fill in the little space left for us.

I didn’t have an answer for him. He took the silence for what it was — a rejection of his request. Although I could tell him from his face that he saw it coming, the anticipation of failure didn’t hurt either of us any less.

“Because if you can’t promise me that I…” he trailed off, weary and only barely awake.

“Spencer, look at me.”

My hands over his forearms caused them to release some tension, his hands falling from my hair and hitting the bruised skin of my shoulders. His eyes then burned into them, recognizing the damage already done for a split second before he forced himself to forget for as long as he could. But in the morning when he saw the marks, he would feel it all over again. We both would.

I didn’t fault him for the bruises or the pain, though. I knew that whatever he felt hurt twice as badly, and it was not the kind that would fade in a few days.

“I can’t make you that promise, but what I can promise is that I love you right now.” I barely made it through the admission with those eyes staring into me. The only thing that allowed me to finish was knowing what would immediately follow. “I love you, Spencer, and I want to help you. You have to let me try.”

I don’t know what it was that made him break. Maybe it was the ever persistent and patient tempo of raindrops against the window, or perhaps it was my insistent need to know the answers, but Spencer took one more deep breath before the words I’d been waiting for fell gracelessly out of his mouth.

“I tried to kill them.”

The silence returned with a new haunted hollowness.

“I almost killed them,” he corrected.

“Who is ‘ _them_?’” I asked instead of addressing the root of the problem. Spencer knew what I was trying to do and refused to let it happen.

“I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t care.”

It was a lie.

“I don’t believe that,” I said, shaking my head and closing my eyes to escape the look on his face as it glistened with the moonlight somehow still filtering through the clouds to find him.

He waited until they opened again before his hand cradled the back of my head, forcing me to lock eyes with him as he continued with crystalline clarity, “I didn’t care who they were, because as far as I was concerned, they all deserved it.”

It was still a lie. It was a lie that he, for whatever reason, really, really wanted to believe. But wanting to believe something didn’t make it any truer.

“You don’t mean that,” I opined, only to be shot down just as swiftly.

“How would you know?” The condescension in his voice was nothing but a poorly disguised defense. He knew as well as I did that what he was saying made no sense.

Because the Spencer Reid I knew would never hurt for nothing.

“Because if you didn’t care, if you really believe they would all be better off dead, you wouldn’t be losing sleep over it,” I stated slowly and softly, “You wouldn’t be crying and begging me to still love you if you didn’t care, Spencer. That doesn’t make any sense.”

All I could hope was that the words got through to him when they were muttered in my voice instead of the constant monologue running through his mind.

And they did. With a slightly delayed reaction as the words sunk in and filled his mind that was hellbent on self-sabotage, Spencer hung his head in what I could only imagine was an unthinkable shame.

“They killed Luis,” he replied meekly, “They killed him in front of me, but they were supposed to kill me.”

My only memory of the young man was instantly recalled, and I tried not to let myself imagine what Spencer must be seeing. When my mind shifted to see Spencer in his place, I shutdown the thoughts altogether. Unfortunately for the both of us, though, Spencer had already seen the horror on my face.

Completely breathless, Spencer’s voice whistled when he asked, “Why didn’t they just kill me?”

That was it— the unanswerable question that clung to him like a second skin. Tattooed on the inside of his eyelids and burned into his irises, the question that prevented the both of us from seeing anything else.

I didn’t have an answer for him. There was only one thing I could be certain of. So, that was what I said.

“Luis shouldn’t have died. But that doesn’t mean that you should have, either.”

But Spencer couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t hear my words because it was only half the question. It was not just why hadn’t they killed him when given the opportunity, but why the world, a god, fate, or destiny dictated that he shouldn’t have. Even if Luis hadn’t died, it became clear to me at that moment that Spencer still would have thought himself worthy of death.

Spencer was not asking me why they didn’t kill him _instead_. Spencer was asking me why he was alive at all.

“What if it worked?”

The question only barely broke me from my horrified thoughts. Having forgot his admission from seconds before in all the panic, all I could think to mutter was a broken, “What?”

“What if I killed those men? Would you still love me?”

I didn’t have an answer for him beyond, “Don’t ask me that.”

His lips tilted into a twisted, forlorn grin like he had gotten an answer. But he hadn’t. I wasn’t ordering him to stop because the answer was no.

“It doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen,” I continued before the smile could grow any wider.

Tired cheeks twitched at my words, falling back into a frown that was somehow more comforting than his smile.

“It matters to me,” he mumbled.

Pulling his hands away from me, I found myself more exhausted than I thought possible. It felt like the longer he held onto me, the more the anger and sadness flowed between us, seeking equilibrium in our embrace.

But there were some things in that feeling that shouldn’t exist at all. The suffocating weight of a tusked beast that didn’t belong on this Earth, let alone in our living room.

“You have to let this self-hatred go.”

Spencer’s shoulders hunched further forward without me to hold onto, and for a moment I thought he might fall even lower. His hands on the ground stopped him, although he continued to rock in his place.

“Easy for you to say,” he chuckled, “You don’t have to see it.”

When I didn’t have an answer, he posited another question with even more bitterness, “What’s it like? To be able to forget things?”

His eyes were not empty anymore when they flashed full of rage. But after a few breaths in the silence, that faded, too, only to be replaced with a soul-crushing sorrow.

“I don’t get to do that,” he sighed. “The harder I try to forget, the more my brain clings to the memory, and now—“

Spencer stopped again. Unlike before, he kept the words close for a reason that didn’t appear to be selfish at all. Our eyes met until I realized what he was doing. He was asking for my permission to speak. He was asking my permission to feel the full force of whatever was in his head.

That time, I didn’t pull his hands off me. I took his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly until he was able to return the gesture. With a deep breath out through a puckered mouth, Spencer closed his eyes as if to demonstrate what was happening as he spoke, “Now _every single time_ I close my eyes, even just for a second, I can see the way it looked when those men were dying.”

The longer his eyes stayed shut, the tighter our grips became. Though it hurt, it felt like a necessary kind. It was the only way for me to understand what was happening in his world.

“And some nights… some nights it’s not them at all,” he paused before explaining, “It’s not them, and it’s not Luis. It’s Nadie Ramos. It’s my mom.”

“Spencer—“

“And it’s you.”

His eyes were open as he forced the words through his teeth with boiling blood. The disgust was written all over pallid features, and I felt it in his hand falling limp. Resting his head against the wall, he never once took his eyes off me as he continued, “Some nights I just sit there and I see you, choking on your own blood. And I don’t get to touch you, or hold you, or help you because there are handcuffs on my wrists and bars between us, and I—“

When he closed his eyes that time, I swore he almost found sleep. The tension bottlenecked at our hands and he tried to inch away from me. I wouldn’t let him, pulling myself even closer until we both rested against the wall.

Turning to keep his eyes on mine, Spencer whispered out the broken answer to my very first question.

‘ _What are you doing awake?_ ’ I had asked.

“I don’t want to see it anymore,” was his answer.

We both saw the flaw in his logic, but I had the decency not to point it out. Not only could he not avoid sleep forever, avoiding sleep would not stop the pain or the memories. Just as he’d said, the harder he tried to lock them away, the further into the maze of memories he would go.

That was where the man I loved was. Trapped behind dozens of armored doors, banging desperately on the windows and scratching at the door with bloody nails. I couldn’t get him out of the prison of his mind on my own, so I did the only thing I could think to do.

Bringing the deadweight of his hand up to my chest, I rested it against my heart. And just like that, to the soundtrack of a slowly slowing metronome, I joined him in his mind with closed eyes and a set of promises that I felt equipped to make.

“I’m still here, Spencer. And I still love you.”

Then, resting his head against my shoulder, Spencer began to mold himself onto my side. I thought nothing of it until the meek word was mumbled against my shoulder.

“Why?”

“I don’t need a reason,” I said with a bit of a laugh, “but there are so many.”

To my delight, Spencer chuckled back. It was fleeting, but it was there. He was still there. I just needed to be there with him.

“What if it never stops? I can’t live like this,” he asked. Before my heart sank too far, he followed the question with the only words that could bring my breath back to me. “But... I really don’t want to leave.”

“Please don’t. I would miss you so badly,” I answered, letting my hands start to flow over his arm that wrapped around my waist. “I can’t promise you that the memories will fade, because I know they might not for you. But I can promise you one day you’ll find more beautiful things to remember when you close your eyes.”

Spencer nodded, understanding that what I said was true. But then in his typical childish and petty way, he playfully countered, “I can’t think of anything more beautiful than you.”

Through the laughter, I muttered a simple, “I can.”

I wasn’t being self-deprecating, though. It was simply the truth. There were so many beautiful things that came to mind when it came to our future. The thoughts filled my dreams both sleeping and waking. When I closed my eyes, I felt the weight of a ring on my finger that didn’t yet exist. I could see him clearly, clutching the tiny hands of a child that sat in my lap.

When I closed my eyes, it was a lot like it was then, with Spencer’s hand over my heart and our bodies pooled together until we could find equilibrium again. That day it was pain, but it would just as easily be happiness again.

“One day you’re going to be surrounded by so much love that there won’t be room for anything else,” I assured him with a smile. “Until that day, I’ll do whatever I can to make up the difference. And when I can’t, I’ll still be there with you.”

Tilting his head up just enough for our lips to meet, Spencer held me a little bit tighter before he collapsed into my lap. My hands combed through his hair, clearing it from his eyes so that I could see the way they settled.

“I love you, Spencer,” I promised.

“Please, say it again,” he whispered on the floor of our home. The rain continued in the background, dripping down the windowsill and weighing down the humid air to return the water to the soil below. In sync with the gentle breeze carrying the droplets, Spencer’s breathing slowed.

“I love you,” I whispered as he finally found sleep.


End file.
